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Posted:
07/10/2016 06:31:30 PM MDT

Updated:
07/10/2016 06:31:52 PM MDT

Armstrong's conservatism allowed room for bipartisanship

Bill Armstrong was a man of strong convictions. No one who knew the former U.S. senator, who died last week at 79, would quarrel with that or the fact that his beliefs were both deeply conservative and religious.

And yet Armstrong's most memorable accomplishment during his 12 years in the Senate was almost certainly his service in 1983 on the National Commission on Social Security Reform, which recommended a bipartisan package of reforms that Congress would ultimately enact. The deal involved sacrifice on both ends of the political spectrum, including higher payroll taxes, more benefits subject to taxation, a hike in the retirement age, and a delay in the cost-of-living adjustment.

The settlement didn't fully resolve Social Security's long-term funding woes, but it was a milestone compromise nevertheless. And it remains instructive, since a similar deal is unthinkable, unfortunately, in today's political environment.

In today's Washington, a firebrand conservative as dedicated to small government and low taxes as Armstrong was would surely spurn such a commission as unworthy of his time — if not an insult to his principles. But not only did Armstrong participate, he became the panel's conservative conscience in terms of insisting that any entitlement fix not rely solely on additional payroll taxes. And his efforts paid off in extracting concessions from Democrats even as he reluctantly accepted more taxes.

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Such statesmanship on major issues is sorely lacking in today's Congress — and yet the need to address entitlements' mounting long-term liabilities, as well as complex issues like immigration, has seldom been greater. Fortunately, such stalemate is nowhere ordained as inevitable. Armstrong's example on the 1983 commission provides reason for hope even in today's divisive political culture.

This newspaper did not always share the former senator's political agenda — his vocal opposition to gay rights, for example, was especially regrettable. But even those who disagreed with him on major issues had to admire the eloquence and civility with which he often framed his case.

Armstrong left the Senate on his own terms while still in his 50s, an age when many career politicians are just hitting their stride. And he would go on to put his stamp on Colorado Christian University, spearheading ambitious redevelopment plans to expand and update the campus with state-of-the-art educational facilities. That he would contemplate such a grand goal in his 70s surprised no one who knew him well. Colorado has lost a giant in its political and civic life.

— The Denver Post

Watching the watchmen

Our privacy rights are under continual assault from out-of-control government. Whether from the National Security Agency hoovering up our telephone call data and various other electronic communications and documents, the FBI amassing a facial recognition database with hundreds of millions of photos, including those taken from state driver's licenses, local police mounting license plate trackers on patrol cars and using "stingray" devices to mimic cell towers and intercept data and track hundreds of cellphones at a time or Transportation Security Administration agents needlessly harassing travelers at airport security checkpoints, governments at all levels routinely violate our Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures.

Last month, a U.S. Senate amendment to an appropriations bill came within one vote of expanding the USA PATRIOT Act and granting the FBI access to citizens' internet browser histories without a court order. Moreover, this was a procedural vote that required 60 votes for passage, which means a solid majority of the Senate believes the government has the right to perform warrantless searches of every website visited by every person in the country. Knowing how things work in Congress, however, we are just some minor arm-twisting away from a re-vote that will successfully swat down those pesky defenders of constitutional rights and civil liberties in short order.

This followed on the heels of the House voting down, 198-222, an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would have defunded the NSA's warrantless searches of Americans' communications and prevented the government from mandating that companies include a "back door" in their encryption technologies that the government (and unknown numbers of hackers and identity thieves) could access. A similar measure had sailed through the House the previous two years, only to get stripped out of the final budget deals, but fear in the wake of the Orlando nightclub attack weakened lawmakers' resolve to protect constitutional liberties, and the measure went down to defeat.

"If we let terrorism compel us to ignore the #Constitution, then haven't the terrorists won?" Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who introduced the measure with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., contended in a Facebook post shortly before the vote.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story